Footage effects: glow, glitch, CRT, halftone and more on real video

Eight effects applied to real footage, each preset a complete ffmpeg command that was rendered and checked, plus a HyperFrames or Remotion version for compositions. They are accents: strong settings live in short hits on beats and cuts, and the subject's face and the type stay clean.

Gates

• The person's footage. Apply effects only to clips the person owns or licensed.
• Cap every command. Generated inputs never end: always pass -t <clip duration> and blend=...:shortest=1, as the presets do.
• Protect faces and type. No bloom, glitch or fringes over captions, logos or a centered face; keep text on an untreated layer.
• Seek-safe and seeded. Every random value is a hash of the frame number, so renders repeat exactly.
• No credits here. These templates render locally for free. Generated footage, voice or music is the varg-ai skill: call estimate_cost and wait for the person's approval before any generation.

Pick a template

8 templates, 34 presets. Each reference file has the same sections: how the pros do it (every rule cited), presets, timing and numbers, how to build it, mistakes that look amateur, sources. Each JSON file holds the same presets as machine-readable values.

Workflow

1. Match the request to a template and one or two presets from the table. Say which and why in one line, and show the person the preset names with their one-line looks before building anything.
2. Read the reference for that template, and load its JSON. Take values from the JSON; do not re-guess them.
3. Build it the way the reference's "Build it" section says, starting from the named HyperFrames blocks or varg components where it names them. Drive every value from timeline time so any frame renders the same on a re-render.
4. Fit it to the brand: swap in the person's colors and fonts only where the reference allows, then re-check contrast and safe zones with the numbers in "Timing and numbers".
5. Check a draft: render stills at the key moments (entrance, hold, exit), go through "Mistakes that look amateur", and fix before the final render.
6. Render with ffmpeg using the preset's ffmpeg chain from the JSON (inputs and filter graph), at CRF 14-16 for anything with grain, dots or scanlines.

Rules that hold for every template

1. Deterministic or nothing: every random value is a hash of the frame number and every noise source is seeded, so renders are seekable and parallel-safe.
2. Generated lavfi inputs never end: cap the output with -t <clip duration> and use blend with shortest=1; pre-render static textures once with trim=end_frame=1,loop=-1.
3. Work in gbrp for blend, displace and per-channel tricks, but run eq and vignette in YUV: on RGB planes they tint the image.
4. Threshold, then multi-scale, then add: glow, streaks and halation start from a soft-knee threshold (0.45–0.95), blur at 2–3 scales (about 1:4:12) and screen or add the result.
5. Real optics are radial: lens chromatic aberration and zoom blur are zero at the centre and grow with radius; flat shifts read as digital glitch.
6. Accents, not grades: strong aberration, zoom and glitch presets live in 2-frame windows or 0.2–1.5 s hits on beats and cuts; only the subtle presets run a whole shot.
7. Print looks need print logic: rotated screens (C/M/Y/K at 15/75/0/45, single ink at 45°), spot-ink hex on warm paper, 3–6 px misregistration, static paper with moving toner.
8. Respect delivery: dots ≥10 px and integer scanline periods (3–4 px) at 1080p, CRF ≤14–16, and scale every pixel value with frame height.
9. Protect the subject and the type: keep fringes off central faces, no bloom or glitch over captions or the logo, text on an untreated layer.

Built from

Xor (@XorDev, GM Shaders); HyperFrames media-treatment recipes; libretro crt-geom and crt-lottes (Timothy Lottes) with @komm64; Kenny Mitchell and Tiago Sousa (GPU Gems); Maxime Heckel and Paper (Ksenia Kondrashova, Agu Seguí); Steve Yedlin; Andrew Kramer (Video Copilot); Remotion, Boris FX, Maxon and Notch docs.

Every rule in the references cites its source by number. The full list, with links and what was taken from each, is in references/sources.md. Values marked as house defaults in a reference are our own starting points where no expert published a number.

Related skills

• paper-shaders: shader backgrounds and textures without footage.
• transition-craft: shake, zoom and bokeh transitions.
• short-form-ffmpeg-cookbook: crop, captions, music.
• varg-video-edit-library: 206 named edits for existing footage (cuts, transitions, headlines, UI, numbers).